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Sometimes Christians argue that Jesus has to be divine in order to atone for our sins. I noticed someone recently citing this argument and asking, “Really? Got a Scripture for that?” Well, that’s the real question for many of these theological questions.
What does the Scripture say? And what does Scripture mean by what it says? Put another way, what pattern of teaching does the Bible provide that can answer the question?
John Calvin rightly affirmed that God was never “inimical or angry toward” Christ at the cross (Inst. 2.16.11). Instead, Francis Turretin explains that Jesus experienced the “want of the sense of the divine love” (Inst. 2:354). John Flavel also specifies that God withdrew his “sensible love” from Christ at the cross (Works, 1:410).
In short, Christ always had God’s love even at the cross. Christ willingly died for the joy set before him. Yet at the cross, he did not sense God’s love (though he always had it) because “the sense of the divine wrath and vengeance resting upon him” intercepted Christ’s sense of love (Turretin, Inst. 2:354).*
If not the Son, then with whom or with what was the Father angry? Here’s my answer. God was angry at sin and sinners, yet out of his great love for us he himself bore our sin and died as our substitute. As Michael Horton writes, the cross “was not a cathartic release of anger but a just satisfaction of God’s cosmic and covenantal righteousness” (Justification: 2:226). [Read more…] about If the Father Was not Angry with the Son at the Cross, with Whom Or with What Was He Angry?
In recent years, many have argued that Penal Substitution is not true. They argue that God could not possibly expend his wrath on the Son of God in our place; he could not stand condemned for us and for our salvation. For them it’s simply not true.
Whenever I hear arguments against penal substitution, they interest me. I want to gain a closer look at the truth, and so I am open to listening to others. But whatever the argument is (and however good it sounds), we always need to step back and ask: Yes, but is it true?
Or better: Yes, but is penal substitution true?
Whatever you think or feel about the doctrine, we must ask: does the Bible teach it? Even if it abhors or scares us.
We must be relentlessly biblical.
And you know what. When we come to understand and to accept the Bible’s message, the abhorrence and fear melts away. You come to see that God is beautiful and that whatever he does is beautiful, good, and right. [Read more…] about Yes, But Is Penal Substitution True?
Eric Metaxas recently invited N.T. Wright on his show to talk about Wright’s new book The Day the Revolution Began. I recently reviewed Wright’s work and couple of people had minor pushback against my critiques of Wright. I noted that N. T. Wright created either-ors that should have been both-ands as well as displacing the Protestant doctrine of penal substitution. On the positive side, I believe his work shows the grandness of the cross and the vocation that God has called us to.
Wright and Metaxas talk about the grandness of the cross, and I think it’s helpful to hear Wright’s perspective from his mouth.
Wright, N. T. The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus’s Crucifixion. New York: HarperOne, 2016. Pp. viii + 440. ISBN: 978-0-06-233438-1. $35.99 CAN [Hardcover]. Source for Book Cover.
In The Day the Revolution Began, N. T. Wright challenges Protestantism’s theology of cross and replaces it with something else. That something else involves Jesus taking up the vocation of Israel to act as image-bearers and as worshippers of God. It also includes the forgiveness of sins, which brings freedom from the curse of the Torah (exile) and from the power of sin.
In my estimation, The Day the Revolution Began recalibrates a partially misaligned theology of the cross with something that creates more problems rather than less. Wright correctly sees the cross as part of a grand scheme of redemption that includes the story of Israel but wrongly rejects penal substitution, which is vital to that story. [Read more…] about Book Review of N.T. Wright’s The Day the Revolution Began
